New Orleans of the Mind [Hear it here]
© Gibbens/Weston
Flirtatious
melodies
Twine round the balconies.
You’re captured by the sunny scenes you find
In your New Orleans of the mind.
Dancers are dancing there
To echoes out of Congo Square.
The tunes are hot and yet they are refined
In your New Orleans of the mind.
You know that
the river’s muddy,
You know that the ground is bloody
Underneath the pale magnolia blooms.
Human souls were bought and sold
Where the clouds are lined with gold,
Where the brass band’s bass drum boldly booms.
Time has nowhere
left to go,
Moments just overflow,
Everybody wears a watch they never wind
In your New Orleans of the mind.
Ladies are strutting there,
Masqueraders take the air,
Tail feathers flutter on the second line
In your New Orleans of the mind.
Things are never
what they seem like.
All your days float off downstream like
Paper boats beneath low-hanging branches.
Who’s the girl with eyes that glitter?
Could be the devil’s babysitter.
All the evidence is circumstantial.
Notes out of shiny
horns
Become bodacious forms
Where the blind man blows his harp for dimes,
In your New Orleans of the mind.
Mary Jane is meeting you
Down on Tulane Avenue.
Every movement is immaculately timed
In your New Orleans of the mind.
You can hear the
church bells ringing,
You can hear the fat man singing.
It seems the celebration is commencing.
The ship of death is sailing by,
The kings of jazz are wailing high,
Giving joy the powers of invention
In your New Orleans of the mind.…
